Rule of Three - 04/18/11

[Aegeri]

And hopefully with far less feat cost for doing so, especially for choosing stuff from the same class, like the weaponsmaster and the slayer, for example.

My interpretation is that they can prepare to spend a heavy feat cost to get very little (Weaponmasters/Rogues getting power strike or backstab) or a very high feat cost to get something that is situationally good (Slayer/Knight/Thief).

 

[pemerton]

The problem is that WotC would really very much prefer if everyone forgot there existed any classes before Essentials. They want people to think of the Essentials version when they're talking about the Fighter. The Essentials version is to become the default.

<snip>

The back of 'Heroes of Shadow' drove this point home for me. It says:

For use with these Dungeons & Dragons Essentials products:
Heroes of the Fallen Lands
Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms
Rules Compendium

I think you're confusing marketing copy with game rules.

The text on the back of HoS is marketing copy. It's not relevant to anyone who has a deep knowledge of the game rules, including the pre-Essentials material. It's job is to tell new players what other books they need to play the game. And naturally enough, it points to WotC's preferred "on-ramp" for the game ie Essentials.

This doesn't mean, though, that the game ruless in HoS are in any way limited to Essentials PCs. From what I've heard it gives us a striker paladin, a striker vampire, a new assassin, and plenty of new wizard and cleric powers (including WIS implement cleric powers, which are primarily for non-Essentials clerics).

Whether or not the rules are any good, I just don't think it makes any sense to say that they're limited to Essentials.

I would have expected HoS to provide some support for the 'classic' Assassin.

Isn't the 'classic' Assassin DDI-only? I think this is a major reason why it doesn't figure prominently in HoS. And in any event, couldn't a DDI Assassin use feats and powers from the HoS Assassin? - meaning that the classic Assassin has been supported.

 

[Jhaelen]

I think you're confusing marketing copy with game rules.

Alas, I'm not. I think, _you_ are confusing official support and compatibility!

But as I mentioned I'd really rather not discuss this here since it's already been discussed ad nauseam in other threads, and it's unlikely anyone will be swayed in his or her opinion no matter what arguments anyone might come up with.

Isn't the 'classic' Assassin DDI-only?

Wasn't the Revenant also DDI-only? If they had wanted to support the 'classic' Assassin with a new build, all they'd have had to reprint was a single page detailing the information common to all 'classic' Assassins. They chose not to. And the reason is not that they wanted to keep it DDI-only, the reason is that it's not an Essentials class.


I'd like to mention that I quite like HoS so far. I've just finished the classes chapter. I love the executioner, don't care about the blackguard, think the vampire is interesting but requires more options, and find the binder a bit underwhelming.
The Death Domain and the Nethermancy and Necromancy schools have several interesting powers that I'd be tempted to take even if I didn't use any of the new builds.
The only material that is completely useless to me is the Hexblade stuff, but that's only a couple of pages, so I don't mind.

I also feel that having a completely new Necromancer class wouldn't have offered many advantages over having a Necromancy school for the Mage class.

So all in all it has about as much interesting stuff as any of the 'Power' books did.

 

[Danzauker]

Now, where are all the 1.000.000 D&D fans that demanded the warlord be named marshal? Will they still care? Or try to find something else to bitch about? Will we ever find out?

And, sorry if that offends, but i cannot get over the fact that the second post in this thread comments ONLY on a spelling error. I mean, this is some tasty stuff with lot's of possibilities to talk about, no?

Forex, i want all classes to be named [Base] [Specialty], but perhaps a little more descriptive. I want my players to immediately know what they get when they choose one.

And i see the comment about support for classes relatively positive - i think he means that support for those will come, but right now they want to concentrate on not creating more classes that need even more support.

Oh, and: adressing problems the community has. Good thing. Or is it? I already hear those who disagree with me sharpening their knives.

I commented just the spelling error because I felt that's the only thing that was worth pointing out. In official material, it looks bad to mispell your own products.

I have nothing else to add to the other news. By the way, I, for one, I'm happy to see the Warlord renamed Warlord (Marshal). I thought Warlord was a crappy name from day one, but I don't think it stands out enough as a piece of new for a debate.

Though I'm a little curious about how PH Clerics, Wizards, and other classes will be called.

 

[Aegeri]

Cleric is called the Templar and Wizard is the Arcanist.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The Modern Major General.

LOL

Agreed. I think the PHB1 classes are fine, but between PHB2 & 3, the only classes we really needed were the Bard, Sorcerer, Druid, Psion, Monk, and maybe, just maybe the Barbarian (though I think the Battle-Rager Fighter could have handled that well enough). I'm not sure we really needed the Swordmage or Artificer as separate classes either.

Yeah, I think MOST of the non-PHB1 classes could have been builds. In fact I'd argue all we really needed was Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Bard, and Psion. One might even argue there's some redundancy even in that list. Paladin could have been the STR cleric, Ranger is just another flavor of fighter, Sorcerer and Warlock are just special Wizard builds, Barbarian is another Fighter, Warden could have been folded into Ranger, etc. For that matter Monk might even have been doable as a Rogue variation, though thematically it might not have been acceptable. With proper forethought everything else could have been builds of those. It would have broadened the options for the base classes and anything beyond that could have been handled with a bit easier MCing or something like themes.

Really, if you parse what Mike and others at WotC have actually said carefully I think what you come out with is basically the above is the outline of how things are evolving. In a sense I DO agree with the people saying that Mike would like to forget about 'classic' 4e. I don't think that is because they hate it, I just think it is because from a game design standpoint it is the past. They did it, they learned from it, they're ready to move on. They ARE willing to throw some support to it, but classic 4e is largely an unmaintainable mess. There are too many classes, unclear lines of delineation between them, etc.

Now, that doesn't mean I necessarily like all the details of the new classes. I think they missed the mark somewhat, but I can understand why they did it. Had they released classes designed purely on an AEDU basis it really WOULD be 4.5. The new stuff would be squarely replacing the old stuff and appealing to the same people. Nobody would be able to argue that Barbarian was still a supported class when it had effectively another class/build doing exactly the same thing the same way.

 

[Incenjucar]

The whole "too many" and "too much" thing really doesn't work for a continuing product. Assuming everyone at WotC wants to continue working, they have to continue to add "too many" and "too much."

 

[kaomera]

The whole "too many" and "too much" thing really doesn't work for a continuing product. Assuming everyone at WotC wants to continue working, they have to continue to add "too many" and "too much."

Well, I think WotC is going to have to find something else to produce "too many" / "too much" of then, because the current churn isn't really working anymore.

 

[Mummolus]

Cleric is called the Templar and Wizard is the Arcanist.

I sincerely hope not. I don't want to play a "Human Templar Templar" when using themes.

 

[Aegeri]

I sincerely hope not. I don't want to play a "Human Templar Templar" when using themes.

Well as they don't assume there are any divine characters in Dark Sun I am pretty sure they weren't concerned about that.